Rationality: From AI to Zombies: Recent Episodes
Eliezer Yudkowsky
What does it actually mean to be rational? The kind of rationality where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes. These eye-opening accounts of how the mind works (and how, all too often, it doesn't) are then put to the test through some genuinely difficult puzzles: questions in computer science about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), questions in physics about the relationship between the quantum and classical worlds, questions in philosophy about the metaphysics of zombies and the nature of morality, and many more.
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Go Forth and Create the Art!
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - The Sin of Underconfidence
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Practical Advice Backed by Deep Theories
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Beware of Other-Optimizing
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Bayesians vs. Barbarians
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Incremental Progress and the Valley
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Money: The Unit of Caring
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Helpless Individuals
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Rationality: Common Interest of Many Causes
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Church vs. Taskforce
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Can Humanism Match Religion's Output?
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Your Price for Joining
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Three Levels of Rationality Verification
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Schools Proliferating Without Evidence
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Epistemic Visciousness
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - A Sense That More Is Possible
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Z: The Craft and the Community - Raising the Sanity Waterline
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - Shut Up and Do the Impossible!
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - Make an Extraordinary Effort
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - On Doing the Impossible
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - Use the Try Harder, Luke
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - Tsuyoku vs. the Egalitarian Instinct
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part Y: Challenging the Difficult - Tsuyoki Naritai! (I Want to Become Stronger)
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - My Bayesian Enlightenment
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - Beyond the Reach of God
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - The Magnitude of His Own Folly
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - My Naturalistic Awakening
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - Fighting a Rearguard Action Against the Truth
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - That Tiny Note of Discord
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - The Sheer Folly of Callow Youth
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - A Prodigy of Refutation
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - Raised in Technophilia
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - My Best and Worst Mistake
Book VI: Becoming Stronger - Part X: Yudkowsky's Coming of Age - My Childhood Death Spiral
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part W: Quantified Humanism - The Twelve Virtues of Rationality
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part W: Quantified Humanism - Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part W: Quantified Humanism - Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part W: Quantified Humanism - The "Intuitions" Behind "Utilitarianism"
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part V: Value Theory - Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part U: Fake Preferences - The Design Space of Minds-in-General
Book V: Mere Goodness - Part U: Fake Preferences - Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone)
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - Interlude - A Technical Explanation of Technical
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - Changing the Definition of Science
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - No Safe Defense, Not Even Science
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - Do Scientists Already Know This Stuff?
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part T: Science and Rationality - The Dilemma: Science or Bayes?
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Many Worlds, One Best Guess
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Where Philosophy Meets Science
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - If Many Worlds Had Come First
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Living In Many Worlds
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Privileging the Hypothesis
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Decoherence is Simple
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Distinct Configurations
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part S: Quantum Physics and Many Worlds - Configurations and Amplitude
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part R: Physicalism 201 - The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part R: Physicalism 201 - Brain Breakthrough! It's Made of Neurons!
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part Q: Joy in the Merely Real - To Spread Science, Keep it Secret
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part Q: Joy in the Merely Real - Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part Q: Joy in the Merely Real - Amazing Breakthrough Day: April 1st
Book IV: Mere Reality - Part Q: Joy in the Merely Real - If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Interlude: An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Variable Question Fallacies
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Conditional Independence and Naive Bayes
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Superexponential Conceptspace and Simple Words
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Mutual Information and Density in Thingspace
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Entropy and Short Codes
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Where to Draw the Boundary?
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Arguing "By Definition"
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Sneaking in Connotations
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Categorizing has Consequences
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Fallacies of Compression
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Replace the Symbol with the Substance
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Taboo Your Words
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - The Argument from Common Usage
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Feel The Meaning
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Disputing Definitions
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - How an Algorithm Feels From Inside
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Neural Categories
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Disguised Queries
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - The Cluster Structure of Thingspace
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Similarity Clusters
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Extensions and Intensions
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - Words as Hidden Inferences
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - The Parable of Hemlock
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part N: A Human's Guide to Words - The Parable of the Dagger
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part M: Fragile Purposes - Anthropomorphic Optimism
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part M: Fragile Purposes - The Hidden Complexity of Wishes
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part M: Fragile Purposes - Terminal Values and Instrumental Values
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part M: Fragile Purposes - Optimization and the Intelligence Explosion
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Thou Art Godshatter
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - An Especially Elegant Evolutionary Psychology Experiment
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Evolutionary Psychology
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Adaptation-Executers, Not Fitness-Maximizers
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Fake Optimization Criteria
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Evolving to Extinction
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - Evolutions are Stupid (But Work Anyway)
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - The Wonder of Evolution
Book III: The Machine in the Ghost - Part L: The Simple Math of Evolution - An Alien God
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - Leave a Line of Retreat
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - No One Can Exempt Your From Rationality's Laws
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - The Meditation On Curiosity
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - The Proper Use Of Doubt
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - Just Lose Hope Already
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part K: Letting Go - The Importance Of Saying "Oops"
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Cultish Countercultishness
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - On Expressing Your Concerns
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Asch's Conformity Experiment
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Guardians of Ayn Rand
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Guardians of the Gene Pool
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Guardians of the Truth
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Every Cause Wants to be a Cult
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - The Robbers Cave Experiment
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - When None Dare Urge Restraint
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Uncritical Supercriticality
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Resist The Happy Death Spiral
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Affective Death Spirals
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Unbounded Scales, Huge Jury Awards, and Futurism
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - Evaluability (and Cheap Holiday Shopping)
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part J: Death Spirals - The Affect Heuristic
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - The Genetic Fallacy
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Hold Off On Proposing Solutions
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - We Change Our Minds Less often Than We Think
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - How To Seem (And Be) Deep
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - The Virtue of Narrowness
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Stranger Than History
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Original Seeing
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - The "Outside the Box" Box
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Cached Thoughts
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Do We Believe Everything We're Told?
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Priming and Contamination
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part I: Seeing with Fresh Eyes - Anchoring and Adjustment
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part H: Against Doublethink - Don't Believe You'll Self Deceive
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part H: Against Doublethink - Moore's Paradox
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part H: Against Doublethink - Belief in Self Deception
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part H: Against Doublethink - No, Really, I've Deceived Myself
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part H: Against Doublethink - Doublethink (Choosing To Be Biased)
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Dark Side Epistemology
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Of Lies And Black Swan Blow Ups
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Is That Your True Rejection?
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Fake Justification
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - A Rational Argument
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Rationalization
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - What Evidence Filtered Evidence?
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - The Bottom Line
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - One Argument Against an Army
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Update Yourself Incrementally
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part G: Against Rationalization - Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Human Evil and Muddled Thinking
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Rationality and The English Language
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Hug The Query
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Argument Screens Off Authority
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Correspondence Bias
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - The Scales of Justice, the Notebook of Rationality
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Policy Debates Should not Appear One-Sided
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part F: Politics and Rationality - Politics is the Mind-Killer
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - Your Rationality Is My Business
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - 0 and 1 Are Not Probabilities
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - Infinite Certainty
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - How To Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - Absolute Authority
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - The Fallacy Of Gray
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - But There's Still A Chance Right?
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - New Improved Lottery
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - Lotteries A Waste of Hope
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - The Third Alternative
Book II: How to Actually Change Your Mind - Part E: Overly Convenient Excuses - The Proper Use Of Humility
Book I: Map and Territory - Part D: Mysterious Answers - "Science" as a Curiosity-Stopper
Book I: Map and Territory - Part D: Mysterious Answers - Positive Bias-Look Into the Dark
Book I: Map and Territory - Part D: Mysterious Answers - Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
Book I: Map and Territory - Part D: Mysterious Answers - Guessing the Teacher's Password
Book I: Map and Territory - Part C: Noticing Confusion - Conservation of Expected Evidence
Book I: Map and Territory - Part C: Noticing Confusion - Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence
Book I: Map and Territory - Part C: Noticing Confusion - Your Strength as a Rationalist
Book I: Map and Territory - Part C: Noticing Confusion - How Much Evidence Does It Take?
Book I: Map and Territory - Part C: Noticing Confusion - Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence
Book I: Map and Territory - Part B: Fake Beliefs - Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable
Book I: Map and Territory - Part B: Fake Beliefs - Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
Book I: Map and Territory - Part A: Predictably Wrong - The Lens That Sees Its Own Flaws
Book I: Map and Territory - Part A: Predictably Wrong - Expecting Short Inferential Distances
Book I: Map and Territory - Part A: Predictably Wrong - Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You